PropertyGuru, the Singapore-based property marketplace backed by digital media and advertising group REA Group, has agreed to a reverse merger with special purpose acquisition company Bridgetown 2 Holdings.
The merged business will be valued at $1.35bn after the transaction and will take Bridgetown 2’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange, acquired when it floated in a $200m initial public offering in December 2020.
PropertyGuru’s existing shareholders will keep more than 70% of the combined entity’s shares. The deal is backed by $100m private investment in public equity financing from REA, Baillie Gifford, Naya, Akaris Global Partners and an unnamed Malaysia-based asset manager, and REA has set aside an additional $32m for equity funding.
Founded in 2007, PropertyGuru operates a real estate e-commerce platform covering Southeast Asian markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and its home country. It hosts more than 2.8 million listings per month catering to 37 million prospective property buyers and 49,000 agents.
The company had previously been backed by media conglomerate Emtek and telecommunications firm Deutsche Telekom’s Scout24 unit. Emtek sold its stake in the company in October 2020 when TPG Asia bought shares and existing backers Square Peg Capital and Vulpes Testudo Fund decreased their stakes.
The deal came in the wake of a $220m primary and secondary round the previous month, the cash being supplied by investment firm KKR’s Asian Fund III and private equity group TPG. It followed the cancellation of a planned $257m initial offering in Australia in late 2019.
KKR Asian Fund III had already led the company’s $145m series D round in 2018, valuing it at roughly $1bn. Emtek, TPG and Square Peg Capital had supplied $130m in series C funding three years earlier, enabling Scout24 to exit.
Scout24 had provided $48m in series B funding for PropertyGuru in 2012, which came in the wake of an $850,000 series A round four years earlier that included Tigris Capital, Finn Evdemon Capital Partners, Upstream Ventures and Steven Diggle.
PropertyGuru CEO Hari V. Krishnan said: “This process of becoming a public company will provide us with greater financial resources to do what we do best – helping people find, finance and own their homes in an efficient and transparent manner.”
